LOUD

Book the Salish Sea Singers for Your Event

Did you enjoy hearing Felicia, Nadine, Hazel, Dana, Caity, and Bryanna perform LOUD? Imagine how much your members or students would benefit from learning more about marine noise pollution and listening to the Salish Sea Singers perform live. We are booking the tour now. We will work with you to figure out what combination of presentation, performance, and/or interactive workshop would be ideal for your event. Email us at Pedelty@umn.edu.

The Salish Sea and Our Oceans are Getting LOUDer

The Salish Sea is getting LOUDer each year. More and more people, boats, jets, and ships pass through and over Georgia Strait, Puget Sound, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca as travel, recreation, training, and commerce continually increase across the region. Researchers in the field of Bioacoustics have documented the negative affects the increasing noise has on fish, marine mammals, birds, and people. For example, orcas have more difficulty communicating, hunting, and rearing their young in LOUD waters.

Kieran Cox and her colleagues at the University of Victoria in British Columbia conducted a meta-study of the marine bioacoustics literature and determined that “findings suggest that the majority of fish species are sensitive to changes in the aquatic soundscape, and depending on the noise source, species responses may have extreme and negative fitness consequences.” Work by Marla Holt’s research team (2008) indicates that orca whales are also also negatively impacted by boat and ship noise, a recurrent finding throughout the Bioacoustics literature on cetaceans. However, much research remains to be done on the subject. Shipping alone has caused background noise to increase “by as much as 12 decibels” according to researchers at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

In response, policy makers in British Columbia and Washington State are recognizing the need to reduce noise pollution in the Salish Sea. For example, the Coastal Ocean Research Institute (CORI) in Vancouver, Canada, has proposed the establishment of “acoustic sanctuaries” within which motorboats would be asked to operate more quietly and maintain greater distances from the orca.

Jets and airplanes present an additional source of noise pollution in the Pacific Northwest. For example, in recent years the United States Navy has radically increased the number of “touch and go” training flights over the Salish Sea. The Navy’s EA-18G “Growler” jets exceed 130 decibels in areas frequented by people and wildlife, a level that can cause hearing loss and disrupt animal communication. The Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve and other health and conservation organizations in the Salish Sea region have asked the Navy to reduce jet noise in the region for sake of both people and wildlife.

Below are a few books, articles, and websites where you can learn more about noise and how it impacts human beings and wildlife. Cox et al. (2018) and Shannon et al. (2016) are particularly useful in that they bring together extensive literature from the field of Bioacoustics. The bibliography is followed by a website that presents useful information concerning noise pollution in marine environments and what people and organizations are doing about it around the Salish Sea and beyond.